by Carrie Asai
He looked down, too. “My name’s Yoshitomo,” he said softly. He looked up at me. I could see what he was thinking in his eyes. You know what that means?
Before I could stop myself, I made myself say, “I’m really attracted to the dangerous type.” I couldn’t believe these words were coming out of my mouth. I lowered my voice to what I hoped was a breathy, Jessica Rabbit–style pitch.
“My life’s pretty dangerous, all right,” Yoshitomo said.
“Oh, I bet you’re not always dangerous,” I said, winding a strand of my hair around my finger. “You look like you could be very…gentle…too.” I looked up at him from underneath my eyelashes. It looked like I’d hit a bull’s-eye.
“I can definitely be gentle…with the right lady,” he said with a little gleam in his eye. He moved his hand over the counter and lightly ran a finger down my arm. I tried to keep from flinching. I was turned on and terrified at the same time. A very strange and electrifying combination. “You like dangerous?” he went on, in a low voice like a tiger’s purr. “You don’t even know what I’ve had to do, little girl,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to.”
“I have an idea,” I said softly, looking into his eyes.
Yoshitomo raised his eyebrows and leaned in, resting his hand on mine. I could feel the scarred skin that covered his missing finger. His eyes seemed darker now. “You do, huh?” he asked, smiling to reveal a set of glaringly white teeth. He looked almost wolfish for a minute. And I felt very Little Red Riding Hood. “How would a pretty thing like you know anything about the world I live in?”
“I…my brother,” I said, before I could think it through. Oh, forgive me, Ohiko, I know you would never… But that seemed like the only way I might believably be connected to the yakuza. “He worked for…for a very important man.”
“He did?” Yoshitomo frowned for a moment, looking serious. He looked me over doubtfully. “What happened to him?” he asked me in a surly whisper.
For the first time since I’d entered Life Bytes, I felt afraid. Please, please let this work. “He got messed up in some bad business,” I went on in my breathy whisper. Now I was so scared, I didn’t have to work very hard to sound breathy. “You know…” I looked into his black eyes. “…the business with Konishi Kogo.”
At the mention of my father’s name, Yoshitomo’s eyes widened, and all the blood left my face. Everything I’d suspected was confirmed in his expression. “Konishi Kogo?” he whispered. “That’s some bad business, all right. Your brother worked for him?”
Worked for him. Worked for him. My father was a yakuza boss. All the breath left my body, but I forced myself to stay focused. I was about to say yes, but instead I was hit by a flash of inspiration. “Not for him,” I whispered. “For…his rival.”
Yoshitomo nodded sagely. “The Yukemuras,” he whispered.
A chill ran down my spine. The Yukemuras. Of course. His “business” rivals. “Yes,” I managed to choke out. My whole world was spinning. Everything I’ve ever believed about my family was a lie.
Yoshitomo shook his head sympathetically and placed his stubby hand on mine again, bringing me back to the present. “The Yukemuras…they’re into some wack stuff. Dangerous,” he whispered. “Some of the things they do…They are the worst of the worst.”
I nodded. “I…I know.” The worst of the worst. And I was almost married into them. Why? Why would my father do that to me—especially if they were enemies?
“Kogo is in a bad way,” Yoshitomo went on. “He is in a coma now, and people say it’s because of a double cross within his own gumi.”
“I heard that,” I lied, still trying to be flirty, although now I didn’t feel like it at all. A double cross within his own gumi? So my father was the “boss,” and one of his men had betrayed him? It was too much information to take in all at once. I felt like my heart would explode.
Yoshitomo frowned. “I’m sorry to hear about your brother,” he said, pulling his hand away. “This isn’t something for a girl as young as you to know.”
I tried to smile. “But I’m a different kind of young girl,” I said.
“I see that,” he said, looking me up and down.
Konishi was the boss. Like…like Tony Soprano, Vito Corleone? But he wasn’t anything like those guys—I couldn’t even allow the idea to sink in properly. Everything washed over me as if I were a sheet of ice. Hopefully Yoshitomo didn’t see how shocked I was. “Do they know who double-crossed Konishi?” I croaked.
He shook his head. “He had many enemies. But I shouldn’t be getting into this,” he said. “What’s your story?”
“Oh. Uh…boring stuff. I’m here to go to school,” I lied.
Tony Soprano. My father was Tony Soprano, whether he looked like him or not. For a second I had this weird vision of myself as bratty Meadow, Ohiko as sullen A. J., Mieko as disapproving Carmela. I almost laughed, it seemed so ridiculous. Mieko was about as un-Carmela as a person could possibly get. But when I thought about it, I could see the similarities between our family and the Sopranos. Hanging around in our fancy house, wearing our fancy clothes, driving our fancy cars, and the whole time all that money was coming from other people’s blood. I never knew.
I looked up at the guy, who was still smiling at me, slowly sipping his coffee. “Have you ever…killed anybody?” I whispered. The question came out before I could think about it. As soon as the words left my mouth, I wondered if it was the wrong thing to ask.
He flinched and looked sort of uncomfortable, then tried to pass it off with a smile. “Why?” he said, not answering my question. “Do you need protecting?”
I shook my head. “I can fend for myself,” I said. I’d definitely done enough of that in the last few weeks. “And I still think you’re a big pussycat.”
He shook his head, laughing. “You’re a strange girl.”
We locked eyes—and then his cell phone rang. He rummaged around his coat pocket to get it. After a brief conversation he motioned for his friend.
He looked back at me. “It was nice meeting you,” he said. “What was your name?”
“Karen,” I said. It was the only name I could think of.
He gave me a crooked, gorgeous smile and then rushed away.
I put my hands on my temples. My head spun. Konishi Kogo, yakuza boss. Yoji Yukemura, his rival boss. My whole life had been paid for by yakuza blood money. My father was a worse man than I ever could have imagined.
And Ohiko. His banishment from our lives. Suddenly it all made so much sense. Had he refused to join my father’s “business”? In my naiveté, I’d thought that Ohiko simply didn’t want to work at Kogo Industries. Baka! I thought. How stupid could I have been? Of course. Ohiko hadn’t wanted to become an initiated member of the yakuza. Of course Ohiko wouldn’t stoop to that! He probably refused and was cast out of my family! I remembered the day when Ohiko “disappeared.” My father wouldn’t speak about it…at all. Of course! He didn’t want to admit that he was trying to drag Ohiko into the underworld of crime. Ohiko was training to become a samurai as well and had been much further in training than I was now. He was much too noble and pure of mind to ever accept the yakuza way. Certainly no self-respecting samurai would consider yakuza dealings acceptable within the code of bushido.
I realized my hands were clenched into fists. Yoshitomo had said my father had many enemies. I assumed he’d meant enemies in the yakuza world. And my father had said Ohiko had gone to work with an “enemy,” which now I interpreted as another yakuza gumi, or family. But would Ohiko do something like that? Why?
I walked back to the computer, opened up the Sanrio Hello Kitty site as a distraction, and typed OHIKO KOGO into the search engine and looked for any yakuza - related chat rooms.
Nothing.
I sat at the computer, dumbstruck. I thought about the parties my father had held at our house. I was never allowed to go to any of them for more than a second. Katie and I would hole up in my bedroom, watching movie after movie, ha
ving a grand old time. The thought of what might have been going on downstairs now made me a little sick. But I remembered plenty of politicians and businessmen attending the party as well. Was everyone in Japan connected to yakuza?
I stared blankly at the last web site I had opened up, an informational web site about the yakuza in general. The yakuza are trying to convince the rest of Japan that they are the world’s modern-day samurai, the champions of the poor, loyal to the family code, I read.
Family code? And what would that be? Prostitution, drug running, killing? If my father had given that line to Ohiko, no doubt he laughed in his face.
I pressed print on some of the pages I’d found. I wanted to hold on to them and study them longer; I’d skimmed many of them quickly because I didn’t want anyone at Life Bytes to see what I was doing.
I sighed as the printer whirred into action. What was the “dangerous stuff” the Yukemuras were involved in? Maybe the seedier side of crime? Like drugs? I wondered if my father was involved in drugs. Oh God. Drugs. He was so antidrug where Ohiko and I were concerned. He got all nervous when we took aspirin. I began to get angry. What a hypocrite! What a nasty, disgusting, deceiving hypocrite!
I took a couple of deep breaths. I thought again of the Yukemuras, the family I’d almost joined. My father had always told me that the marriage was a business arrangement. An arrangement to unite the two yakuza families? In some kind of truce? I’d known since I was a little kid that my father and Yoji Yukemura merely “tolerated” each other when doing business. They were more or less enemies. I was never allowed to play with Teddy growing up (not that I’d ever wanted to). But if they hated each other so much, why marry us?
I wondered. What if the Yukemuras, esteemed for their dangerousness, had somehow set up the wedding as a “truce” but then double-crossed my father on my wedding day? What if the Yukemuras had planted the lie in my father’s head about Ohiko? What if they were the ones who were after us?
I had to say, it made a lot of sense.
A shiver traveled down my back. My almost-husband’s family could be behind this whole thing.
“What are you working on?” a voice came behind me. It was the Professor this time. I minimized my screen and blushed. Now the only screen that was up was the Hello Kitty web site. Cat cartoons waved happily.
“Awww,” the Professor said.
But then I wondered. Perhaps these guys could help me. They seemed to know everything about electronics. There were a few things I needed; I wondered if they knew where I could find them.
So I took a deep breath and asked the Professor to sit down. “I’m working on something that’s a little weird,” I said quietly. “I’m trying to find out the truth about someone I’m associated with. It could get me into some trouble. I don’t want him to know that I’m looking up stuff on him. Do you know if there’s any way I can do things invisibly, like search the Internet without leaving a trace that I’ve been to a particular chat room or make phone calls without my name coming up?”
“Sure,” he said. “I have a friend who works for a big cell phone company. They’re developing something called a disposable cell phone. You use it once or twice, you throw it away. It’s supposed to be for people on vacation or something, but it’s also good for people who don’t want to be traced. I’ll see if I can get you a couple.”
“That would be great,” I said.
“And Internet searching…well…there’s a code you type in if you don’t want your search path to be tracked.” He wrote down the code on a piece of paper and handed it to me. “There’s untraceable e-mail, too. Again, it’s kinda like the untraceable cell phone. You sign up with a search provider, put in the code that won’t track where you’re going, and get a new e-mail address. Don’t fill in any of your real information. There’s enough e-mail providers out there these days that are free and don’t care. Use the address once, then get a new one.”
“Okay,” I said. “Great. Thanks.” I had a hunch these guys would know their stuff.
The Professor turned to go back to his computer and then turned around again. “So, who’s the guy?” he asked.
“What?” I said.
He smiled. “Well, I’m guessing you want to check up on a boyfriend, right? See if he’s messing around? That’s why you don’t want to be traced, right?”
I nodded shakily. “Uh, yeah. That’s why.”
But something in my expression must have told him that what I was dealing with was much bigger and much scarier than an unfaithful boyfriend. He backed away, looking concerned, his sly smile gone. “Well, whatever help you need, I’ll be here, no questions asked.”
By then darkness had fallen and I realized my shift was over. I was definitely ready to go home. My first workday had been every bit the struggle I had been expecting—but for completely unexpected reasons. I said good-bye to Farnsworth and the others, slid my coat and glasses on, and slipped outside.
I felt more lost than ever now. Nothing made sense. I had to collect myself even to find my way home. But I planned to do more of the same tomorrow. I wanted to find out more of my father’s dealings with the Yukemuras. Something about that didn’t seem quite right. I wanted to see if there were any chat rooms about the wedding arrangements, why they had been made.
I slammed the door. The house was still dark; I guessed Cheryl was still at her job. I threw my coat on a chair and slumped down on the couch, rubbing my temples. I was planning to do more of the invisibility exercises Hiro had taught me, but I felt way too exhausted. Visions of those web sites swam before my eyes.
Then I remembered. I’d printed them out. I’d never picked them up.
“Ughhh,” I moaned. Although the Life Bytes boys seemed harmless, I didn’t want them to see what I was working on. I didn’t want them to know my background. What if they had already picked them up off the printer? Even though they seemed perfectly oblivious and kind, I couldn’t trust anybody. I had to go back and get them. It didn’t matter if the place was closed—Farnsworth had given me keys.
At least the walk back there would give me a chance to practice my invisibility again. Visions of the people my father might have killed floated before my eyes. I remembered one guy really clearly. A squat guy named Tomo. He was like a Japanese John Candy—really roly-poly, cracking jokes all the time. He had a big, booming voice and would strut down toward the soundproof compound with my father, chomping on a cigar. Whenever I saw him, he would have something for me—candy, a flower, a necklace. My father would shake his head, saying, “Tomo, you don’t need to buy gifts for my daughter,” but Tomo would crinkle up his eyes and say, “But she’s beautiful! Everyone should give her gifts!” This was back when I was about twelve, and I loved the attention. My father never called me beautiful.
But then I began to notice that Tomo hadn’t come around for a while. One night at dinner I asked my father, “What happened to Tomo?” Mieko had made a little cough, then hid her expression behind a napkin. My father had continued to eat silently. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t answer. I was still his little princess, and he thought all my questions were adorable. “Did he move away?”
“Tomo is not working for me any longer,” my father had said. Then he returned to his meal. He said the words in such a way that they ended the conversation.
Did Konishi kill Tomo?
The thought made my stomach crawl. It just didn’t seem right—but then nothing I’d learned that day seemed right. Had my father done the killing, or had he hired men to do it for him? I couldn’t believe I was having such thoughts. I supposed that Ohiko, once he’d found out (I was certain he knew way more than me, especially since my father was trying to groom him for the business), must have had similar nightmarish thoughts. If only I could have talked with him about it.
At least sliding in and out of the shadows was fun. I was practicing the invisibility and doing a pretty good job at it. No one looked me in the eye the whole way to Life Bytes. But when I rounded the co
rner, I noticed a dark figure standing right in front of the closed Life Bytes. I stopped short, still reeling from the tension of the day. I was too far away to make him out clearly. Who the hell is that?
He was holding on to the bars that covered the windows, peering in and then darting his head back and forth. He didn’t look the right body type to be Farnsworth or any of the “regulars” I’d hung with that day. Was I crazy, or was he casing the joint to break in? When he turned, I suddenly realized that he was wearing a ski mask.
In L.A.
He was definitely up to something shady.
I thought about all of Farnsworth’s stuff in there. The stereo itself was incredible—it had to be worth thousands of dollars. This guy looked like your typical street thug, the kind I’d seen all too much of lately. I didn’t want him messing with the place I’d just gotten a job at. I didn’t want him ripping off all of Farnsworth’s stuff. And I could probably take him.
I felt adrenaline surge through my body—partly from the success at my first taste of being on my own, partly from the sense that I needed to get this guy away from the store.
So I rushed him.
With quick reflexes I gave him a chop to his neck and immediately drew myself inward for protection, as Hiro had taught me. The man, obviously hurt, wheeled around in pain. Then, with dread, I saw the silvery glint of a knife in his left hand. I hadn’t thought that he would be armed. I should have knocked it out of his hands instead of going for his throat. It was a deadly mistake.
Although pained, the man found me and grabbed me by the throat. I tried to get out of the hold, but I couldn’t. I’d been taken off guard. I was mesmerized by the knife. He held it to my throat; the metal dug deeper and deeper into my skin.
I was going to be killed by a random street thug for one stupid mistake. I’d never find out the truth about what had happened to Ohiko and wouldn’t be there when and if my father recovered from his coma. I’d never find out who was after me. I couldn’t even scream.
